A Little Knowledge (5/7)
****************************
by
Patti Murphy
By 4:30, Mulder had driven down so many gravel roads that he
thought his teeth were going to shake right out of his head. The
addresses that Danny had been able to find for the three new
phone lines installed that month in Wolf County were deep in what
a real estate agent might have called a charming wooded setting.
His patience failing with the afternoon light, Mulder was more
inclined to think of it as the middle of nowhere. He'd stopped
at a small general store hours ago, in search of sunflower seeds
and directions, but had gotten neither, and now he was hungry as
well as lost.
He tapped the steering wheel impatiently and scanned the
road ahead for any sign of civilization, but the forest met the
gravel in an unbroken line. The trees, still translucent green
with their spring leaves, managed nevertheless to block out the
late day sun, imposing a tinted twilight on the road. Mulder
realized that when the sun finally did set, it was going to be
very dark. If he didn't find this last place before then, he was
going to have one hell of a time finding his way out of here.
The driveway was so narrow and overgrown that he nearly
passed it. At the last second, it registered. He slammed on the
brakes, then threw the car in reverse and backed up, the tires
spitting gravel all around. There was no mailbox or sign, just a
path that led off into the thick woods. Mulder pulled the car
off the main road, easing the wheels into the ruts in the path,
and hoped that whatever mud he encountered wasn't deep.
A few hundred yards later, the car emerged into a rough
clearing. There was a small cabin, built mostly of logs, with a
clapboard covered addition on the back. A Nissan Pathfinder was
parked a short distance from the cabin and Mulder pulled up
behind it. The clearing was bathed in shadows and when Mulder
got out of the car, he spotted a light on in the cabin. The
smell of wood smoke hung in the air.
Good, he thought, as he made his way across to the cabin,
somebody's home.
He was still several yards from the cabin when the door
opened and a woman looked out. He saw the colour drain from her
face.
"Dr. Hamilton?" he said, as he reached into his pocket for
his i.d.. "Dr. Leslie Hamilton?"
The woman, who looked like she might cry, nodded.
Mulder stopped a safe distance away and held out his
credentials for her to inspect. "I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder,
with the F.B.I.. I'm here to help you."
She looked at him for a long moment, cast a glance at his
identification, and then her shoulders sagged. "It doesn't
matter anyway," she said. "I'm tired of hiding. If you're here
to kill me, you might as well come in and get it over with." As
Mulder watched, she turned and walked wearily back into the
cabin.
Scully checked her answering machine as soon as she got back
to her apartment. There were two messages, one from her mother,
just to say hi, and one from Peter, saying he was sorry that he'd
missed her and that he would try to reach her again later. She
stepped out of her pumps and stripped off her suit jacket as she
listened to his voice, made tinny by the machine. She debated
whether or not she wanted to be home for his next call as she
padded down the hall to her bedroom. By the time she'd unclipped
her holster and exchanged her skirt and blouse for black leggings
and a t-shirt, she was still undecided and beginning to wish it
would all just go away.
She sighed as she sat on the edge of the bed to lace up her
sneakers. There just wasn't time to think about Peter right now.
Her mind was racing, trying to sort through all the pieces that
had been dropped in her lap these past few days. She needed to
put them in some sort of order so that she could find the holes
and figure out what pieces were still missing. The apprehension
that had been with her since Mulder had given her the disk still
gnawed at her insides, had in fact grown noticeably since her
conversation with Beth this afternoon. They had something big
here and it was important to do it right.
She pulled on a grey sweatshirt and grabbed her keys,
carefully locking the door behind her. She stretched quickly on
the front steps, anxious to start running, to hopefully clear her
mind. Once she had her thoughts in order, she would call Mulder
and tell him what she knew about the retrovirus that Dr. Hamilton
and the others had engineered. She trotted off down the
sidewalk, heading towards the running paths at the park.
A few moments later, a silver Oldsmobile Ciera pulled out of
its parking spot and drove down the street. It reached the end
of the block, signalled and turned in the direction of the park.
The driver didn't notice the grey Taurus that fell in behind it
in the next block.
The interior of the cabin was lit by two tired lamps and was
sparsely furnished. A couple of armchairs that had seen better
days were pulled up by the fieldstone fireplace and an upended
orange crate with a lantern and a stack of books on it stood
between them. The kitchen consisted of a hotplate with two
burners, some whitewashed cupboards, a tiny table with two chairs
and a sink. At the far end of the room, there was a wooden
partition that blocked off what Mulder supposed was a bedroom.
The woman was pouring water from a plastic jug into a
kettle. "Well, since you've come all this way to protect me,
Mr... uh..." She turned and looked at him. "What did you say
your name was again?"
"Mulder," he replied. "Fox Mulder."
She snorted and turned back to the kettle. "Well, Mr. Fox
Mulder, since you've driven all this way to save my antique ass,
the least I can do is offer you a cup of tea." She put the
kettle on the burner and turned a dial. "You might as well sit
down. You look like you've got a lot of questions to ask."
Mulder tossed his trenchcoat over the back of an armchair
and sat down at the kitchen table.
"How did you find me?" she asked, as she rummaged through
the cupboards.
"The e-mail that you sent Dr. Inglis," Mulder said. "We
realized that you had a phone line and Mrs. Inglis remembered you
mentioning this cabin."
She brought a plate of cookies to the table, shaking her
head. "I knew I was leaving myself wide open on that one, but, I
felt I owed Bill at least a warning about what I had unleashed."
She put the cookies down in front of Mulder. "Here, you look
like you haven't eaten in days." She went back to the cupboards,
started rooting for tea bags and cups. He ate a cookie and
watched her preparing the tea. She moved slowly, and Mulder
detected a hint of stiffness in her walk, but she looked much
younger than her seventy years. She wore faded jeans and a man's
red flannel shirt with a turtleneck underneath. Her hair was
silver and very neatly pulled up into a bun. When she finished
at the cupboards, she came and sat opposite him at the table,
leaning forward on her elbows. "So, how much do you know, Mr.
Mulder?"
"I know that twenty five years ago you were involved in some
sort of top-secret government project to design a virus and that
you probably tested that virus on an unsuspecting population," he
said. "I know that this information isn't quite as secret as it
used to be, due to some action on your part. I also know that of
the four scientists who worked on the project, you're the only
one who hasn't met a sudden and suspicious death."
Her eyes were a frosty blue and there was no emotion in them
as she studied Mulder. "You're not here to kill me, are you?"
she said.
Mulder shook his head. "How could I after you've gone to
all the trouble of making me tea?"
A trace of amusement in the icy eyes, as if he was a child
who had just recited his lesson well. Mulder helped himself to
another cookie.
"What do you want to know?" she asked.
"Who were you working for? Who authorized the development
of the virus?"
"Ultimately some covert group in the government that
everyone would swear doesn't exist, but most of our contact was
with military types. They probably took their orders from
somebody higher up."
"Was it a biological weapon you were developing?" Mulder
asked.
She smiled grimly. "We preferred not to call it that,
particularly after Nixon signed that treaty in '68 which outlawed
biological agents."
"But that's what it was, wasn't it?"
The emotion was gone again and her eyes were the colour of
frozen smoke. "It was the atomic bomb of biological agents, Mr.
Mulder," she said. "This wasn't some rinky-dink little bug that
the army would set loose on a battlefield to take down a few
thousand troops. This was an agent that was designed to
neutralize the entire population of the Soviet Union."
Mulder stared at her. She nodded. "Yes," she said, "it was
that big."
The kettle whistled and she got up slowly and went to turn
off the burner. "Many of my colleagues believed that it was much
safer than nuclear warheads. None of that annoying radiation to
worry about afterwards." She poured the boiling water into the
teapot, and clouds of steam rose from it. "You must remember
that this was the 1960's, and we believed that not only were the
Russians developing even more deadly strains of viruses, they
were months, if not years ahead of us."
She turned to look at Mulder, to read his expression, then
turned her attention to the teapot again. "How old were you
during the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Mr. Mulder? Two, maybe three
years old?"
"About that," Mulder said.
"Well then let me tell you that while you were still in
diapers, this whole country experienced fear on a scale it had
never known before. The enemy was in our very back yards,
pounding on the door," she said. She brought the teapot over to
the table, set it down then returned for the cups. "Everything
we had held sacred suddenly crumbled before our eyes. For
months, people walked around expecting it to rain missiles on
them. We were all terrified."
She put a china cup down in front of Mulder and one at her
place and then sat again. "We thought what we were doing was the
right thing. We thought that by having something equally lethal
to wave under their noses, we could force the Russians to
behave."
"So you went ahead and tested a deadly virus on five hundred
innocent people?" Mulder asked.
"Acceptable losses, Mr. Mulder, or at least that's what the
military called them," she said, her eyes on her cup. "Every
good general knows that in any battle, men will die. And make no
mistake, we were at war. The loss of life seemed minuscule
compared to the greater risk of leaving ourselves open to foreign
attack. We even managed to convince ourselves that those five
hundred or so people who died were martyrs to a great cause."
Mulder shifted in his seat. Her eyes flicked up as he
moved.
"I'm not asking for your pardon, Mr. Mulder. In fact, I
don't expect you to understand. I'm just telling you what it was
like." She ran her finger along the rim of her cup, and Mulder
noticed that it trembled slightly. "It all seemed so very black
and white then," she said.
"How did you collect the data?" Mulder asked.
"Operatives in hospitals, in major cities, posing as nurses,
mostly. They had access to all the patient's records, and of
course to their insulin. The operative would identify suitable
candidates who were admitted to the hospital for some reason.
They would incorporate the virus into their insulin and then they
would wait. Within three to eight months, once their immune
systems had failed, the subjects would usually be readmitted to
the hospital, suffering from some illness which eventually killed
them."
She leaned forward, lifted the lid on the teapot and peered
inside. Satisfied that it was properly steeped, she poured
steaming tea into their cups, then looked at Mulder again.
"When did it end?" he asked.
"In a sense, it didn't," she said. She wrapped her hands
around her cup, to warm them. "The research was going incredibly
well, we had a 98% fatality rate and what we'd learned in a few
short months about RNA viruses, as we called them then, it took
the rest of the world a decade to figure out."
"So what happened?"
"I'm not sure," she said. "The project was very suddenly
shut down. Maybe they lost interest or maybe there was a shift
in the power structure. I don't know. For whatever reason, our
services were no longer required and we were dismissed, with the
reminder that our lives and the lives of our families depended on
our continued silence." She sipped her tea, and stared at the
tabletop. "Bill Inglis told me that every so often, they would
follow his kids home from school." She shook her head.
"Subtlety was never their strong suit."
"So once your husband died, you realized that you had
nothing to lose and decided to blow the whistle," Mulder said.
She smiled, but there was a sudden weariness in her features
that hadn't been there before. "It's much more ironic than that,
Mr. Mulder. You see, my husband died of AIDS, probably
contracted through a blood transfusion he received while
undergoing routine surgery. He unknowingly infected me and
eventually, this horrid little virus will kill me too, and so
twenty five years later, justice will be wrought."
She waited for Mulder's reaction, but he said nothing.
"It's really rather poetic, don't you think? Watching
someone you love die slowly and painfully from a terrible illness
and living every day with the knowledge that you doomed hundreds
of innocent people to that same fate." She took another sip of
tea, then carefully set her cup down. "I am not afraid to die,
Mr. Mulder, because I am no longer afraid of hell. It can't be
much worse than what I've endured these past few years."
Their eyes met and she held his gaze for a long time,
challenging him to say something. Mulder kept his expression
neutral and waited for her to go on.
"And so, suitably chastised, I decided to do my part to
bring this dirty little secret to light," she said, picking up
her cup again. "The first step was to get my hands on the
information, the data, the medical records. My late husband, who
designed security systems for computer networks was a brilliant
man, and although it took about a year and a half, he hacked his
way into the necessary places and got me what I needed. Then, of
course, the question was how to make this information public."
The fire had died down to glowing coals and she got to her
feet and moved stiffly to the fireplace. She poked at the ash
with a long stick, then tossed on another chunk of wood.
"At first I considered contacting all the families of the
subjects," she said, "but in the midst of researching the
whereabouts of the surviving relatives, I came across that young
reporter and decided that he was the most logical choice." She
pushed at the log with the stick, trying to position it on the
hottest embers. "His father had been a victim of our little
creation and so I thought he would be highly motivated to get to
the bottom of this."
"Wait a minute," Mulder said. "You gave this information to
a reporter?"
She straightened up and nodded. "Yes. The young man at the
Washington Post." She looked at Mulder quizzically. "That's why
you're here, aren't you? Because he contacted you?"
A knot began to form in Mulder's gut.
"I was tipped off by an anonymous source," he said. "What
is the reporter's name?"
"Peter O'Hara," she replied.
The knot tightened. "Oh, shit," he said.
Threatening grey clouds had followed Scully on her run,
blotting out the sunset and eventually forcing her to turn back,
but the rain held out until she was home, the first fat raindrops
starting to dot the pavement as she trotted up her front steps.
She stood, hands on her hips, and watched the rain fall, while
she caught her breath. It had been a good run, even though it
had been cut short, and her muscles felt warm and loose. She
couldn't wait to step into the shower.
She propped one leg on the iron railing, grabbed her ankle
and eased her body forward until her forehead touched her knee.
Not bad for an old woman, she thought. She held the position for
a while, then switched legs.
She studied the bushes under her front window as she
stretched and noticed that they were badly trampled. She was
reminded of the scene that had taken place on these steps last
night and she sighed. She had just decided that she was going to
have to call the building super to come and repair the damage to
the bushes, when she spotted something shiny in the dirt. She
leaned over the railing and squinted in the half-light, trying to
make out what it was. Unable to identify it, she descended the
steps and waded in, pushing branches out of the way, searching
the ground.
She located the object and bent over to retrieve it. It was
a bracelet, with a heavy silver chain and an oval plate in the
middle. She held it up to the light. On one side was a caduceus
-- two snakes intertwined around a winged rod -- and the words
MEDIC-ALERT. She turned it over. One word was engraved there:
DIABETIC.
The rain came down harder, but Scully stood there, clutching
the bracelet, her thoughts churning in her head.
"Oh, my God," she said. "Peter."
A moment later, she slammed the door to her apartment and
flipped on the living room lights. She strode across the room to
her computer, not bothering to take off her sneakers. There was
an antique crystal vase on the table beside the computer, which
held the roses that Peter had brought her yesterday. She glanced
at them as she turned the monitor on.
She stopped abruptly, one hand on the computer, and a tingle
of fear ran through her.
The monitor was warm.
She felt it with her other hand to make sure. It was
definitely warm.
She sensed, rather than heard someone come up behind her.
It was at that moment that she realized she had left her gun and
holster on her bedside table.
Leslie Hamilton stood by the fireplace, giving Mulder an odd
look. "Mr. Mulder, you're very pale all of a sudden," she said.
Mulder got up and grabbed his trenchcoat, felt in the pockets for
his cellular phone, swearing at himself when he realized that
he'd left it in the car.
"Is something wrong?" she asked, as he headed for the door.
Mulder opened the door and took a couple of steps towards
his car before he saw the headlights, way off in the woods. As
he watched, they were extinguished. The vehicle moved so slowly
that Mulder could scarcely hear it. He bounded back into the
cabin, shutting the door behind him.
"Is there another way out of here?" he asked.
The woman hesitated.
"I think the people who want you dead are in your driveway
and we have to move quickly. Is there another way out of here?"
he said.
"There's a window in the bedroom," she said.
Mulder took her by the arm, and rushed her across the cabin
to the tiny space that served as a bedroom. There was a cot and
a small chest of drawers. Mulder looked around, then guided the
woman to the corner furthest from the door.
"Stay down," he said. "And don't make a sound."
She nodded, her eyes wide with silent fear, and she crouched
in the corner.
He tried to open the window but it wouldn't budge. He
pushed against the frame in a few places, and heard a cracking
noise where it had been painted shut. He tried again to open it,
struggled for a moment and then felt it give. It moved a few
inches and stopped. Another heave and it slid open. With a
glance back at Dr. Hamilton, he hoisted himself through the
window, landing quietly on the ground. He drew his gun and
instinctively crouched, making his way to the corner of the
cabin. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he spotted a
figure emerging from behind his car. Mulder waited until the man
was out of his line of vision, then he rounded the corner and
pressed himself against the wall. He moved soundlessly, his
pistol grip loose, his heart thudding in his chest. At the next
corner, he paused and listened. There was no sound. Mulder fell
into a crouch, his back against the cabin, straining to hear some
hint of the man's movements.
The faintest squeak of old hinges reached Mulder's ears. He
waited, holding his breath. A few seconds later, he peered
around the corner. The man was inside the cabin.
Mulder bounded around the corner and into the doorway, his
weapon pointed ahead of him. The man was twenty feet away,
standing by the table where Mulder and Dr. Hamilton had been
drinking tea.
"Don't move!" Mulder shouted.
The man started to spin around and Mulder saw the flash
before he heard the shot. Mulder managed to fire twice as he
threw himself to the ground. He rolled away from the door and
hurriedly got to his feet, breathing hard. There was no movement
inside the cabin.
Mulder moved cautiously back into the doorway, keeping his
gun trained on the body on the floor. He got close enough to
determine that the man was dead, then scooped up his gun and
sprinted out of the cabin towards the path to the road. The
man's car was a few hundred feet away from the clearing and
Mulder circled it once at a distance before he approached. There
was no one in the car. He found the keys in the ignition, but
the trunk and glove box were both empty.
He ran back to the clearing and his car, stopping to grab
his cellular phone. Ten minutes and three phone calls later,
Mulder had both the county sheriff and the U.S. Marshall on their
way to the cabin, with promises to arrive within the hour. He
tried Scully's number next, then her cellular, but didn't get an
answer at either. The knot in his stomach tightened another
notch.
He returned to the cabin and called to Dr. Hamilton. "I
think it's safe to come out now," he said.
She appeared in the door, her eyes wide, and looked at the
body laying on the kitchen floor.
"I shot him," Mulder said.
She nodded. "I can see that."
"Someone from the U.S. Marshall's office is going to be here
within the hour to place you in protective custody. Your
whereabouts are no longer a secret and I think it's the best way
to keep you safe."
"You mean alive."
Mulder nodded imperceptibly. "I have to contact my partner
and get back to Washington. I want you to take this gun and wait
for the Marshall to arrive. They told me that they would be here
soon." He crossed the room to give her the gun. She took it
with trembling hands. "Just stay inside and you'll be safe."
Mulder had grabbed his trenchcoat and was at the door when
she spoke.
"Mr. Mulder," she said.
He turned.
"I am in your debt," she said.
Mulder nodded and hurried out the door.
She sat down at the kitchen table, for a while, clutching
the gun, then moved to an arm chair. She fidgeted around the
cabin, stoking the fire a half-dozen times. She managed to stay
busy for a few more minutes then decided to wash the tea cups
they had used. She had just finished drying them and putting
them away when she heard the van pull into the clearing.
Surprised by the rush of relief that she felt, she hurried to the
door and peered out into the darkness.
A man got out of the van and started walking towards the
cabin.
She wondered for a moment why he wasn't wearing a uniform.
And then she tried to remember where she had put the gun Mulder
gave her.
He fired once. The bullet pierced her skull and she
crumpled to the floor. The man stepped over her as he entered
the cabin, paused long enough to glance at the other body that
lay on the floor. He placed a small canister in the center of
the room and then left.
A few moments later he climbed back into the van and nodded
to the driver. He pulled out his cellular phone and dialled.
In the depths of a building in Washington, D.C., a phone
rang. The man who answered it had just lit another cigarette and
a haze of blue smoke hung in the air. He picked up the receiver
and held it to his ear, but said nothing.
"The target has been neutralized," the man in the van said.
A puff of smoke. "Did Mulder get away?"
"Yes, sir. It went exactly as we expected."
"Very good." He hung up.
The van had reached the main road and was accelerating when
the two men heard the explosion back in the woods.
cont.